A multi-party audio interaction, such as a conference call, offers a convenient and inexpensive collaboration environment. A conference call minimizes or eliminates travel costs that would be necessary for a face-to-face meeting, and can be arranged and conducted relatively quickly. Consequently, conference calls are prevalent in business and other environments.
It is common for a participant to a conference call to desire to replay a portion of the conference call even while the conference continues. For example, at times a participants' voice may not be clearly audible during a conference call, and replaying what the participant said may be helpful. Frequently a participant to a conference call is interested only in certain topics that may be discussed during the call. While other topics are being discussed, the participant may find it difficult to pay attention to the call, or may even perform other unrelated tasks during the conference call. Consequently, it is not uncommon for a participant to realize only after a conversation has begun that the participant has missed a portion of the discussion about a topic in which they have an interest. Unfortunately, the missed portion of the discussion may have been important for the participant to fully appreciate the context of the discussion. Moreover, it is typically undesirable to interrupt a discussion during a conference to ask for a summarization of a previous portion of the conversation. Consequently, the participant may choose to remain silent, denying the other participants the benefit of any insight the participant may have. Thus, for any variety of reasons, it would be helpful if a participant could easily have a portion of a conference call replayed to the participant while the conference continues. Unfortunately, in a conventional monaural environment, replaying a portion of the conference over the same audio device with which the participant is listening to the conference would result in a confusing, and likely indecipherable, mixture of the replayed portion of the conference and the ongoing portion of the conference.
One solution to this problem would be to mute the ongoing portion of the conference while the replayed portion of the conference is being played, so that the audio signals of the replayed portion do not audibly interfere with the audio signals of the ongoing conference. However, muting the conference would likely exacerbate the problem, as the participant would need to replay the portion of the conference that the participant missed while listening to the replay. Thus, it would be beneficial if a participant could listen, on demand, to a previous portion of a conference while continuing to listen to the ongoing conference.